Consultants & "complexity stuff" LO10926

Arthur Battram (apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk)
Sat, 9 Nov 1996 21:58:41 +0000

Replying to LO10896 --

replying to: Michael McMaster <Michael@kbddean.demon.co.uk>
>Subject: Pegasus: Wheatley Keynote LO10896

>I had conversation with Murray Gell-Mann the other week where he was
>concerned that what consultants and the general public was doing with
>"this complexity stuff". His concern was that the ideas of control,
>organisation, design were being totally rejected and "self-organisation"
>was being proposed without any idea of design, etc.

Mike, I'm not aware of anyone who is using complexity ideas without any
idea of design- quite the opposite, for me and others I talk to , design
is key. Design of spaces, rules for groups, etcetera.

Compare the article by jim mclellan in thursdays guardian (our US readers
will know it as the manchester guardian, for some reason) about the new
john casti book 'would-be worlds', which alleges that 'SFI is not in the
business of serious science but is more concerned with PR'.

Methinks Murray doth protest too much.

Best wishes

Arthur Battram

--

from Arthur Battram, organiser of the LGMB project 'Tools for Learning': helping local authorities to apply complexity concepts to personal and organisational learning. 'Learning from Complexity' pack available December '96, likely cost is now 100 full price [50 -half price- for local authorities in England and Wales who finance LGMB] for details email me: apb@cityplex.demon.co.uk "complexity is in here... and simplicity is out there...if we want it to be..."

Learning-org -- An Internet Dialog on Learning Organizations For info: <rkarash@karash.com> -or- <http://world.std.com/~lo/>